| NW Buttress of Bonanza | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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June 22-25, 2005
Paul Belitz, Phil Fortier, Dave Coleman, Sky Sjue Dave and I were planning on a multiday extravaganza to Adams during the two weeks I had between finals and the start of summer classes, but the weather failed to cooperate. Classes started, and weekend trips seemed appropriate. A email from Sky suggested a four day trip during the week, Wednesday through Saturday. My work ethic battled the allure of a potential trip of the year, but my allure of an incredible trip won out. Sky has been persuing some contrived goal of skiing all the 9,000 foot peaks in Washington. On his list remained Bonanza. Bonanza? That's the highest non-volcanic peak in Washington, right? The standard route goes up the Mary Green Glacier, to a few pitches of fourth-class rock. Finding a information on a different route was difficult. But the Beckey guide showed an interesting line: the NE Buttress looked like 3500 feet of snow to the West Summit. Beckey warned that "the original party found it steep and brutal, with avalanche danger", but a photo taken by Paul Klenke posted on summitpost.org made the route look very do-able. Looking at the topo map, we could approach from Holden Village, hike five miles to Holden Lake. From the lake, a quick scramble would take us to Holden Pass. Drop down the other side, traverse two miles to the Company Glacier, traverse the glacier, climb the buttress, and we would celebrate with a Bonanza Bonanza on the West Summit. Hubris demanded that we schedule an extra day to climb and ski Dark Peak, or whatever looked promising. After all, the traverse from Holden Pass to the glacier looked easy. The route on the map showed no green. We could probably get to the glacier the first day. A probem with Bonanza is that approaching is a bit of a logistical problem. The logical approach is induced by Holden Village, a Lutheran community on the wrong end of Lake Chelan. The lake is 50 miles long, and 30 miles have no road. Thus, approach by boat is mandatory. Dave, our resident Chelan expert, found the necessary information. A two hour boat ride would take us to Lucerne. From there, the Holden school busses provide transportation up to the village. Once in the village, we would eat lunch and depart around 2pm. This would give us plenty of time to get to a campsite the same day. Then, we'd climb and ski the Buttress on Thursday, do something Friday, and hike out with time to catch the busses on Saturday. Sounds like a plan. Sky, Phil, and Dave were all game. Ross didn't come for some reason. Peculiar, I thought Bonanaza was his baby. Oh, well. The drive over Stevens Pass was wet, but the clouds broke before reaching Leavenworth. The skies were bluebird when we reached Wenatchee, and soon we were at the lake. We caught the Lady of the Lake II at Fields' Point, after paying through the nose for a ticket (the Lake Chelan Boat Company has a nice little monopoly on lake transportation). We boarded the boat, perused the winter edition of the Holden Village newspaper, enjoyed the scenery, and talked smack for two hours. The busses were waiting at the dock, and after a half-hour ride we were deposited in the seculuded Lutheran community of Holden. There, we were greeted with many signs introducing us to the strictly religious town: CHEER FOR QUEER! Apparently, this is GLBTQ (Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender/Questioning) appreciation week at Holden. (On a tangent, what is 'questioning'? Doesn't Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual cover all possibilities? Nevermind, I don't want to know.) How interesting. I found the town very unique. Staffed mainly by volunteers, people come here from their 'normal' lives, and stay for a few months. Nobody seemed to be stressed out, in a hurry, or have any sort of a care in the world. Everywhere people were lounging in the sun, or reading a book. It struck as what I would have thought of as a hippy commune rather than a Lutheran town. Yet the community goodwill makes the town special. More of a big family than a city. After lunch, we packed our skis and walked out of town. We recieved some questions about the boards. Jokingly, I explained to a nice lady that the skis are just training weights to remain in shape for winter. I'm afraid she actually believed me. The hike was very pleasant. A good trail with nice views of Copper, Fernow, and Dumbbell brought us to Holden Lake in about two hours. From the lake, we found a bit of alder leading to a talus field. The talus brought us to Holden Pass. The weather was closing in; we donned some clothes and our skis, and we followed some snow patches down into Sable Creek Basin. A few sprinkles prompted Dave and me to pitch my Betalite, but the rain held off allowing us to comfortably eat dinner. After dinner it sprinkled a bit, giving Sky a chance to pontificate upon the 'tents are for punters' theory, and Phil to envy the tented denizens of Sable Creek Cirque from the confines of his boulder-sheltered bivy. The next morning we woke to clear skies. We packed and started traversing north. Extremely dense slide alder and berry bushes were overcome with liberal application of profanity and spastic thrashing of limbs, and we crested the ridge. After dropping a thousand feet down frozen snow and loose talus (where we harvested a picket and sling of unknown origin), a flat traverse provided us with our first views of the NW side of the mountain. Yet the approach was not over yet. Several dirt gullies were in the way, but posed no major obstacle. A quick 4th class downclimb brought us to a snow finger at the base of the glacier. Donning boots, crampons, harnesses, and helmets, Phil led us up onto the rather impressive Company Glacier. A few cracks prudently prompted us to rope up. Sky and Phil were kind enough to kick steps into the softening slush as Dave and I followed. A bit of hard glacier ice was encountered at the glacier choke, allowing me to greatly appreciate the front points of my new G-14s. A quick step across the mini-bergschrund brought us to the upper slope. Several hundred feet of tool shaft-plunging brought us to the roll, and after a break we continued to the summit ridge, were we found Sky and Phil waiting. Sky pondered the wisdom of skiing from the true summit. After contemplating a belayed ski, a ski rappel, and just pointing them, he opted for the latter. The rest of us downclimbed a bit of rock to a perch 50 vertical feet lower. Phil was most pleased to reach his skis, while I was feeling intimidated by the prospect of the descent. Sky dropped in first, ripped some 50 degree, icy turns for Phil's video camera. Phil dropped in next, while I opted to sidestep a small gap in the rocks and avoid turns on the icy, poor runout section. I joined Phil on the roll, while Sky stayed high to get a photo. Dave traversed out, and opted to test the validity of the 'you fall you die' theory as it pertains to this slope. The results were somewhat inconclusive. The snow lower down was soft, and some fantastic steep turns were found. I was unduly nervous and hurried down the steeper slopes while the others took their time and took lots of photos. My confidence level was quite low even on the flatter glacier. On the flats we all found a few rocks, but no big deal. We collected water at the toe of the snow finger and changed to our shoes. There was no hurry despite it being about 5pm; the sun sets at 9:30 being so close to the solstice. The hike wasn't bad; the slog up the talus was barely noteworthy albeit a bit tedious, and soon we were perched on the ridge above the bushwhack. The intrepid mountain explorer MtnPhil tapped into the Force and informed us that he could sense a route back to camp that would avoid the morning's bushwhack workout. In the end we firmly established that Phil needs to work on his Force connection, but made it to camp anyway, where I made a significantly overdue deposit well below our water supply. We ate a well deserved dinner and crawled into our sleeping bags content. Friday was reserved for another big mountain. At least, that was the plan back in Seattle. The approach urged us to stay closer to camp. Martin Peak was appealing, but not appealing enough, and we dubbed Friday an official rest day. Dave dragged a plastic bag containing twenty pounds of food out of his pack, eliciting surprise and disbelief among the rest of us. Given such an amount of food, we had no choice but to help Dave lighten his pack for the hike out. We made a pot of coffee, courtesy of Sky, which was enough to motivate an expedition to ski the 500 foot high snow patches in the cirque of camp. The day consisted of a run on nice corn, some rum, and food. Repeat ad nauseum. In the evening, we opted to hike back up to Holden Pass to ensure a easy hike out to Holden on Saturday. The camp at the pass was nice, a quick rain shower in the evening was barely a bother. We cooked dinner as it drizzled. We huddled in the trees, with the majestic mountain spilling waterfalls down the adjecent cliffs. Holden Lake was below, and I rejoiced in the euphoria of the previous days combined with the solitude and peace of our sheltered nook. Some climbers passed by, intent on the Mary Green Glacier route the next day. Hopefully they were out of earshot that night, as we were not as quiet as we could have been. In the morning, we packed our stuff and traipsed into the valley below. A touch of alder near the lake was little nuisance. a nice hike on painful feet, past the dayhikers and families, brought us down to Holden. Many people asked how our hike was. I told them all that we had a fantastic hike. A few even asked about the ski. Eventually, the bus brought us down to the dock. As the Lady of the Lake was late, I took an excruciatingly cold dip in the lake for entertainment purposes. Soon the boat came, and after thoroughly fumigating the boat with rank climber smell, we were deposited at the cars. Burgers in Leavenworth and frozen pizza at Sky's house ended the day. |
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